Speaking at Microsoft's financial analysts meeting today, CEO Steve Ballmer was refreshingly realistic about the company's struggles in smartphones and tablets. "Mobile devices. We have almost no share."

Right. Now that Ballmer himself admits it, can we please settle the discussion? Windows Phone has been a failure up until now.

Visual Studio is very highly regarded by many, and I share the opinion that it is one of the best IDEs around. Not just that, but the quality of the documentation, debugging tools, and platform are top notch.

I've read articles comparing Windows Phone, Android, and iOS development and the WP environment is very competitive.

It is definitely an advantage for Microsoft that they have strong tooling with VS. That's a lowered barrier to entry to a lot of people.